


To Shop Happily

by hydianway



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Curtain Fic, M/M, My Apologies To The Clash, Slight Surrealism, Supermarket Shopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 22:12:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4496664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydianway/pseuds/hydianway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>-- not a guide by Remus Lupin and Sirius Black</p><p>This fic is about Remus and Sirius trying to do a bit of a shop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Shop Happily

**Author's Note:**

> [here is a list of slogans for coco pops over the years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoa_Krispies#Advertising_slogans), [a fifty second clip on youtube entitled "1970s' food shopping UK"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgtEoir0Pgs) and [the audio for lost in the supermarket by the clash](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T74hJpdD0-4&list=PLw8I74P--tlUP-FtOe7PHIafm8VbQygSZ&index=8). if you look at these one after the other it is sort of the ~vibe i was going for. in case it were not immediately obvious, this is not a very serious fic. 
> 
> thank u to [s](http://spacenaiads.tumblr.com/) for looking this over.

‘We need to go shopping,’ Remus announces, coming into the room and flopping down onto the bed next to Sirius. ‘There’s no bread left, we’re down to our last teabag, all the cans left have awful things like boiled beetroot in them. And we don’t even have any booze.’

‘Uhh,’ Sirius says, rolling over to plant his face right in the middle of a pillow. ‘Can’t your mum do it again?’

Remus hits him on the back of the leg, ‘No,’ he says. ‘Honestly, Sirius. My mum has better things to do than run around after us, she only did it last time out of some weird sense of guilt, because I was moving out and she felt like, bad about it or something. But we’re, you know, proper adults living on our own, we really ought to be able to do our own shopping.

‘And honestly,’ he says, ‘how hard can it be. Other people go to the supermarket all the time and it doesn’t seem to hurt them.’

‘Uhhhh,’ Sirius says into his pillow, then: ‘fine.’

‘Good,’ Remus says, then rolls onto his side to kiss him on the back of the head. ‘Get your coat, we’ll make an adventure of it.’

Sirius grumbles again, but drags himself out of bed and into a battered black jacket that looks like it hasn’t seen a decent wash since 1975. (Knowing what he does about Sirius’s laundry habits, Remus would rather not spend too long considering whether or not this may actually be true.)

They walk down the dingy stairs to the street, and Remus drives them to the supermarket in the very slightly illegal car that he and Sirius and Lily had magically modified in the two month long grace period between leaving Hogwarts and being thrown head first into the frightening world of adulthood and occasional guerrilla warfare.

Sirius fidgets in the passenger seat as they drive to the shops. He would probably like to drive, but after a rather unfortunate incident somehow involving the kerb on both sides of the road, a rubbish bin left out on the street and the bumpers of two other cars, as well as the lower hanging branches of a tree, he is only allowed to drive the motorbike, which is much smaller and therefore easier to fit into parking spaces.

The drive passes without incident, and before they know it they are parked (very neatly, not at all to Sirius's slightly abstract shame) in a carpark that is devoid almost entirely of human life, aside from quite a lot of litter blowing about the place and a single red car in the corner park.

The front facade of the supermarket building towers over them, strange and concrete and really rather dystopian, all things considered. Remus and Sirius glance at each other grimly and set off towards the entrance.

‘Do we have to?’ Sirius says, pausing just before the trolley collection bay. ‘Like, really have to?’

‘It’ll be fine,’ says Remus, glancing a little distractedly around him. ‘I used to come shopping with my mum all the time, it’s not half as bad as you think it is. And I have a list, we’ll be out in no time.’

He digs into his jacket pocket and pulls out a crumpled piece of paper, on which is scrawled phrases like, ‘Tea-- YES THE CHEAP KIND SIRIUS,’ ‘that kind of pasta that’s all different colours’ and ‘Baked beans NOT THE AWFUL TINNED SPAGHETTI THAT YOU LIKE YOU HEATHEN WEREWOLF YOU.’

He frowns, squinting at the corner of a word that may or may not be "sneeze." It could equally well be "cheese."

‘Your handwriting’s awful,’ he tells Sirius.

Sirius shrugs. ‘Trolley or basket?’ he asks.

Remus frowns, and then spots something revolting in the bottom of the basket Sirius is offering. It might be a leaf; it also might not. It is grey and whitely fuzzy around the edges. 'Trolley,’ he says. ‘Try to pick one with all the wheels mostly intact.’

Sirius nods gravely, and by some miracle of fate manages to pick a trolley which only lists a bit to the left. They walk into the supermarket proper, right into the middle of the fruit and vegetables section. 

Oh god, thinks Remus at the sight of an endless sea of very sad looking fruit and vegetables, piles of apples reflected in the mirror above their crate into more piles of apples, each of them older and sadder and paler looking than the last.

‘Oranges?’ he suggests. He would check the list, which is still in his pocket, but it seems rather insignificant and possibly pointless in the face of such absurdity. In front of him there is what a sign rather optimistically refers to as "pineapples," but look more like avocados with some leaves glued on, and to his right is a pile of barely yellow "bananas."

Sirius nods, apparently shocked into silence by the sheer volume of wilted cabbage on the shelf directly to his left.

They pick sadly through the fruit piles for a few minutes, and then after they have enough to satisfy Remus that they’re not going to die of scurvy for the next week at least, they press on to the next section of supermarket, which is apparently an enormous row of fridges containing terrifying, cling-film covered packages of fresh meat.

Somehow, backing out of the section where the meat fridges are does not lead back into the realm of sad looking vegetable, but into a row of small, brightly coloured boxes with very excitable and yet entirely incomprehensible writing all over them.

Remus and Sirius glance at each other, stare in mild confusion for a moment, and then wordlessly agree to continue. 

Halfway down the aisle, Remus sees his brand of tea amongst a sea of loud marketing, and seizes it before he loses sight of it again, putting it into the trolley like he thinks something's going to snatch it out of his hand. 

He looks at Sirius again, and Sirius nods, setting his mouth into the same line Remus has only seen in such situations as Death Eater raids and final examinations, so they continue along that aisle and then down the next. Remus hopes he is not the only one of them having to suppress the urge to grab the other’s hand.

Five minutes later, they have managed to become quite hopelessly lost.

Sirius looks around him, apparently baffled by the complete and total uniformity of their surroundings in all directions. Remus, who has been busy driving the neighbours, Sirius, and quite probably himself crazy by playing _London Calling_ on repeat all week, starts to hum quietly along to the tune of _Lost in the Supermarket_.

Sirius, though retaining some fondness for The Clash despite a week of horrifying overexposure, does not quite retain enough for him to want them to follow him into Supermarket Hell. He takes a moment from looking baffled at the seemingly endless rows of shelves surrounding them to glare at Remus, who grins and starts singing the words under his breath.

Sirius rolls his eyes and walks off determinedly down one of the aisles. Remus, mostly out of fear of losing him and being left alone to the mercies of the improbably harsh glare of fluorescent lighting tubes, follows him, the wheels of the trolley he’s pushing slipping slightly on the streaky lino floor, now for some reason listing to the right.

They walk down aisle after aisle, rounding countless corners and following many promising-looking signs pointing to Canned Goods and Baking Supplies, all of which seem to point to the exact same place, only further into a never ending labyrinth of aisle after aisle after row after row of strip lighting and panic-inducing sales announcements. 

Some indeterminate amount of time later, Remus is still humming The Clash, and his internal record player has gotten up to _I'm Not Down_. At this point, both he and Sirius have significant doubts over this particular adventure ending well for either of them, but the sentiment is appreciated. They haven’t seen another living soul since Remus was humming _Clampdown_ , making it at least twenty three minutes ago, and the comforting green EXIT signs that had been just visible in the distance at that time are nowhere to be seen.

‘Do you think this is a Death Eater trap?’ asks Sirius.

Remus frowns. ‘I don’t think so. It’s not really their style, is it.’

Sirius considers for a moment, taking in the shelves of dried goods, and the suspicious looking brownish patch on the lino a few feet away.

‘No,’ he says. ‘They usually go for a bit more--’ He gestures with both hands, trying to convey through erratic motion what he can’t with proper language.

‘Drama?’ says Remus. ‘Ceremony?’

‘Yeah,’ says Sirius. ‘Like, they’d never go for something so... mundane.’

‘Right,’ Remus says. ‘So why can’t we seem to find anything?’

‘That’s not fair,’ Sirius says. ‘We have lots of things. Tea! Canned tomatoes! Actual vegetables! Fruit!’

‘I suppose,’ says Remus, and then: ‘Is that bread over there?’ as he squints off into the oddly misty and far distant end of the aisle where they’re currently standing.

Sirius squints off in the same direction. ‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘It looks a bit like milk, if you tilt your head like this.’

One of the fluorescent tubes flickers in the ceiling, and the tinny sound of an intercom crackles out over speakers Remus can’t see.

Then just as suddenly as it had crackled on, the intercom cuts off and a set of brightly disjointed lights start to glow from the same shelf where the bread had been, or the milk, or maybe something else in the same category of ill-definably boring but also very necessary foodstuffs.

Remus flings aside all pretense of nonchalance, and grabs for Sirius’s hand. He misses; Sirius has tried to do the same and they’ve ended up with their fingers not-quite overlapping, rather uncomfortably.

‘Look,’ Remus says, adjusting his grip on Sirius’s hand. ‘We’ll stick together, go and investigate, fight the bloody Death Eaters if they really have decided to go into the supermarket design business as the next step in their grand plan for world domination, and then we are going to get out of here if we have to blow through the ceiling.’

‘Right.’ Sirius nods grimly.

‘Let’s go,’ Remus says, and they walk hand in hand down the aisle, Sirius’s free hand on his wand and Remus trying valiantly to keep a one hand grip on the trolley, now creaking alarmingly on top of its inability to steer in a straight line. He feels rather superstitious about keeping hold of the trolley, like it’s only his grip keeping it from leading it to it’s sinister, storage room dwelling leader, or trying to run off with all their successfully-found items inside for a sacrifice to the gods of futile consumerism.

The lights buzz and flicker once more as they walk, and there is more static over the loudspeaker. The strange glowing points at the end of the aisle dim and brighten with the rhythm of their footsteps and some kind of strange mist seems to deepen around them, except if either of them had stopped to try to pinpoint exactly what it was that seemed to be impeding their vision, they would have had to conclude that the air was perfectly clear.

They walk slowly down the aisle, hands clammy and tense and footsteps uncertain,prepared to fight off a Death Eater horde at the drop of a hat, or at least run for their lives from an army of sentient shelves. Sirius lets out a very embarrassing, high pitched _eek!_ about a third of the way down, when he thinks he sees something moving in the shadows. Remus jumps and clutches at Sirius' elbow, sure that he heard the swish of a cloak. There's a crack almost like someone apparating when they're maybe a quarter of the way from the end, and this time they both squeak and grab hold of each other. 

When they do get to the end, everything is perfectly normal. The eerie lights have vanished, replaced only by the silvery bits of the packaging on the bread, and the blaring static of the loudspeaker has faded into a tinny rendition of some ghastly music from the 1950s.

There are a few Thursday morning shoppers milling about by the checkout, and they give him and Sirius funny looks as they stand, white faced and terrified, in the middle of the row.

Remus blinks. ‘But--’ he says.

‘It’s all--’ says Sirius. 'What the  _fuck_.'

‘We thought--’

Remus looks down and realises he’s still clutching at Sirius’ hand, which he quickly drops, and runs a hand through his hair in an attempt to look casual and not at all like he had been bracing himself for a fight to the death only moments before. Sirius turns to look very interested in a packet of muesli.

‘Do people actually eat this?’ he asks, a few seconds too far into an awkward silence for it to sound very natural.

‘Apparently,’ says Remus after another awkward pause, and picks up two boxes of cornflakes and one of coco pops, puts them in the trolley. He looks at Sirius, who is continuing to stare down at the packet of muesli, glancing up every few seconds to check their surroundings.

There’s a crying baby in the front of a trolley a few metres away, harried looking mother rocking it back and forth as she stands in the queue. Remus has never been so glad to hear an infant wailing in his life.

‘Do you think it was just--’ he starts. ‘You know, the--’

‘The supermarket?’ asks Sirius, looking up from the cereal. ‘I don’t-- do you think it’s really gone? Whatever it is?’

Remus looks around. The room seems to be looking more cheerful and welcoming by the second. ‘I really don’t know,’ he says. ‘Can we just--’

‘Leave?’ Sirius says. ‘Please.’

They pay as quickly as possible, and then walk as fast as they can along the mirror-lined exit path, their faces reflecting back at them in a ghastly undead pallor and the rows and rows of lighting and shelves stretching out behind them, to infinity and vague nausea and well beyond. As they move through the sliding doors to the supermarket and out into the wholesome, natural sunlight, they blink and grimace in the unused brightness, and then grin and try to keep their trolley under control as it pulls them both down the ramp from the exit doors to the carpark, much more welcoming looking now than it had been on driving in.

‘You say you _stand_ , dun-dun- _dun_ , by your _man_ ,’ Remus sings, doing a horrifying little step-dance Sirius thinks he must have picked up from his dad. With the very brown and slightly worn cardigan he is wearing, darned just above the pocket and by the hem of one of the sleeves, and his sensible shoes and boring-square haircut, Sirius feels like he’s been offered a vision from thirty years in the future, when they are both old and grey and tired and supermarket shopping is a routine and a chore rather than a terrifying expedition into the unknown, and they probably live in the countryside with a dull green car that won’t ever drive at more than 50mph even downhill and with significant coaxing.

Given Sirius has previously (and loudly) been of the opinion that hopelessly boring middle age could well be a fate worse than death, he wonders why he isn’t running for the hills at the thought, and is instead grinning like a madman.

 

**Author's Note:**

> um. hope you enjoyed?


End file.
